


We are but Mere Shells

by orphan_account



Category: Narcos (TV)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Gen, Heavy Angst, Implied/Referenced Torture, Minor Character Death, Non-Graphic Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-27
Updated: 2020-02-27
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:21:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22927114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: The things you do when you've reached your limit.
Relationships: Javier Peña/Reader
Kudos: 22





	We are but Mere Shells

Bogotá is always hot, but on a day like today where grey clouds screen the sky in anticipation of a bad storm, Bogotá is fucking humid. Even in the air-conditioned rooms of the embassy, your skin is sticky with sweat and you’re repeatedly pulling your shirt away from your chest to fan as a brief second of respite. Sometimes, when you’ve finished filling out another report, the paper comes with when you lift your arm away.

Eyes lift up from the cluttered contents of your desk and gaze around the office. Most are stuck at desk duty just like you and Peña—he’s across from you, eyebrows perpetually furrowed as he scribbles boredly onto a paper before filing it away in a manilla folder. However, Murphy stumbled upon a lead all on his own and, after insisting he was good to go alone, left earlier with a few of Carrillo’s men. 

Not to say you’re looking for a fight, but the younger you back when you took this job years ago would be itching for just the tiniest bit of action. You don’t enjoy the constant violence, per se, but one time you took a week’s vacation and the normality of civilian life made you incessantly restless. You slept less then than you do now, if that tells you anything. Right now, your focus is solely on Escobar, but when that inevitably ends, you will be sent away to fight in some other drug war to capture and/or kill some other drug lord. 

Anyway, the paperwork is tedious and meticulous and Peña is staring a hole into your head at your habitual pen-clicking when your telephone rings for all of one second before you’re grabbing at it like a hawk to a fish. You speak your title into the plastic with practiced ease, awaiting whether this is to be a legitimate call or not. 

“Es Nataly.” One of your informants, a young prostitute whose age and innocence made her a golden girl to Escobar’s sicarios. 

Fingers snap in Javier’s direction to get his attention as you reply, “Nataly, ¿qué tienes para mí esta vez?”

Automatically, he’s got a pen and paper ready to write, but you don’t miss the recognition flicker across his face at the mention of Nataly’s name. 

“Un par de sicarios, no sé sus nombres pero sé que son los hombres de Escobar, estaban hablando de una gran reunión mañana por la noche,” she says, and you can tell she’s whispering with a hand held over to the muffle the sound. 

You have a line specifically for anonymous information, but citizens always take a huge risk calling your specific number. And an even bigger risk agreeing to call you again. Half the time, your tippers end up dead the next day. The only thing you can do is make good on their bravery and hope it leads to something revolutionary. 

“¿Mañana por la noche? ¿Dónde?” Javier writes in his chicken scratch.

“Dijeron algo sobre El Cuello De Botella.”

“El cuello de botella. ¿Mencionaron algo más?” More chicken scratch.

“No... me puedo poner más.”

“¿Más qué?” You say it slowly, praying your fears aren’t founded. 

“La información.”

The line is cut before you have the time to voice your concern and you slam the phone back down angrily onto the receiver. 

“What?” Javier questions, wondering where this sudden frustration has come from. Although, it’s not like he’s not prone to random emotional outbursts from time to time. Comes with the job. 

“Nataly’s about to do something incredibly reckless.” 

No need to explain. In fact, you’re not sure you even have the patience to explain. Nataly came to you after a raid on one of Bogotá’s many whorehouses, meek and shy and with eyes that never left the ground. Out of everyone, even Murphy and Peña, she’d come to your first because you were the only other woman aside from the other whores. 

Her tips were invaluable, but with the precariousness of the situation and how  _ young  _ she looked, you’d only mentioned her to your two partners and no one else. You’d rather not think about the fact that Javier has probably fucked her, as well, because you couldn’t help it. Emotions are your enemy’s greatest leverage and it’s no secret that you’ve imprinted on her. Anything that happens to her would be your fault. 

Unfortunately, you can’t leave. All you can do is sit back down, mull over paperwork, and spend every few minutes glancing at the clock. It’s about to be another long fucking day. 

~ ~ ~

Radio silence. A whole fucking week and Nataly hasn’t gotten back to you. Her tip about the meeting was a bust, there wasn’t anything going on. The only thing to show for at that dusty, old bar was a bunch of drunkards and sketchy folk slinking back into the shadows the minute the police showed up. It’s been worrying you to no end. 

Until Javier gets a call on his personal line about a group of sicarios held up in an abandoned warehouse with a few captives. One of the captives was described as a young female, short in stature, and a very skinny thing—an uncanny description of the girl you’ve come to see as your little sister. The seething anger boiling inside of you as you ride with your partner to the warehouse is unparalleled. 

Your tactical vest is snug around you, your gun is locked and loaded, and your eyes are blind with an all-consuming rage. You know Javier is concerned for your well-being just as much, but his focus needs to be placed elsewhere.

“Watch out for yourself and for the captives. Not for me,” you state, staring straight ahead as the building comes into view. If you had fur, it would be bristling right now.

“I know you and I know what you’re like when you’re angry. Don’t be rash,” he replies sharply, staring hard at the side of your head as you refuse to look at him.

The truck stops with a jolt, everybody flying forward and back into the seats at the touchy brakes. Heavy rain patters against the metal, running rivulets down the windshield the second the wipers stop. Your hand is on the handle, pulling it and pushing the door open, one foot on the ground. “Like I said.” And then you’re out with a slam in his face, the wind whipping mercilessly.

He’ll be following your every move whether you like it or not because if anything happened to you then that would be on him. You’re partners and that’s what partners do. He refuses to think about the countless nights you’ve spent in each other’s apartments and the shift in your relationship that came with. No, this is strictly business and that’s all. Partners protect partners. 

Deadly silence as you all fall into stealth mode, a group of men rounding the back while the rest of you line either side of the front. You’re already soaked, but the boiling of your blood keeps you warm. You nod to Carrillo and he kicks the rusty, metal door in with a loud bang that echoes around the space. Gun raised, you take the first shot of a man who’s turned around in surprise with barely enough time to raise his own weapon. 

Shoulder wound near the heart. Down for the count. It’s a large open area where the rest of these fuckers sit around a shitty fire they’d made themselves, but the upstairs is your priority as you see no captives. Letting Carrillo deal with the, you head up the stairs with your gun cocked. 

White noise blares in your ears as you take slow but deliberate steps, one surely after the other. You keep your eyes trained straight ahead, but just as you’ve ascended the crest of the stairs, a brief moment of heartbreak at seeing all the captives bound and gagged, the last sicario, a horribly ordinary man, pops out from behind a pillar with a gun in hand. 

His shot rings first, and even if you might get hit you aim and fire, but the shot falls short of any serious damage as there’s a sudden weight pushing into you from behind, effectively knocking you to the ground in a painful heap. His bullet pings off the metal rafters behind you, but you watch as he falls in agony to the dusty ground, hand gripping his leg from which blood pours and pools. 

“What the fuck did I tell you?” Javier reprimands, standing up with a huff and offering a hand to which you slap out of the way.

Her pain is insurmountable compared to yours. “Nataly!” you shout, running over to her broken and bloodied from lying on the floor.

Her hair is matted, her eyes shut and sunken in, her body frail and covered in an array of marks. A horrid, rattling breath leaves her cracked lips as you hold her head in your lap. Javier calls for backup and for an ambulance, but all of that is just background noise to the blood rushing through your ears and the pounding of your heart. You did this. You always do this. Nobody is safe when they’re associated with you.

But one sound breaks through: the goddamned sicario. His cries of pain act as a beckoning. You know what you need to do. With a soft thumb rubbing her cheek, you allow Javier to pick her up from the floor and your heart breaks at how easily he does so. She looks so small in his arms, her clothes mere tatters around her body.

You turn, watching as Carrillo’s men handcuff the last remaining sicario. “Wait, let me deal with him.”

Javier protests immediately, but you cut him off with a stern look, instead focusing on Carrillo when he says, “This man is useless to us, he has no information to give.”

“So why are we taking him in?” In the absence of a response, you continue, “Please, leave me be just this one time.”

He and Javi exchange worried looks, but he relents nonetheless with a quiet nod. “Muy bien, hombres, sáquenlos de aquí ahora. ¡Las ambulancias están en camino!”

And then there were two. You with a crazed look in your eye and the sicario who backs away, shuffling pathetically across the floor in utter fear.

~ ~ ~

Javier leans against the side of a truck, uncaring of the rain pouring down on him. His only complaint is that he can’t light a cigarette to calm his nerves. Sirens flash blindingly all around him, an alarming mix of blue and red reflecting off of the multitude of puddles forming in the dirt. Frantic medics dash to and fro and there’s yelling all around him.

You’ve been in there for a good five minutes, each second ticking by longer than the last. When he’d lifted Nataly into his arms she felt like nothing. She was barely conscious as he’d handed her off the the doctors on scene, and in just the brief moment it had taken him to step back, she was surrounded by the professionals as they shouted orders left and right. He hopes, prays even, that she’ll be okay—physically. Mentally… there was no way. Nataly was gone and in her place a fractured shell.

Maybe that’s what they all are, just shells. Some sturdier than others, some better painted, but just shells that can break and be replaced. 

A single gunshot rings out into the evening. Javier jumps, eyes darting to the warehouse from which it came. A few moments later, you emerge. A stony look covers your face that’s splattered in blood he knows is not your own. Your gun hands limply in your hand that’s dotted with bruises and more blood. Your clothes are stained red and your path isn’t impeded until you stop a few feet in front of him. 

Your numbing mask is back on, so he doesn’t say anything. Only stares back at you, gently takes the gun from your hand and clicks the safety back on. The rain stains streaks of red down your cheeks, like blood tears, and down your neck. You don’t make any move to wipe it away. 

Then, your eyes trail over to the ambulance where Nataly is being loaded into on a gurney. The doors shut with a doomed finality and you and him watch as the red and blue of the flashing lights fade into a blurry dot in the distance. 


End file.
